From his position, Solon could see what the nobles below could not. At every exit, armored city guards had lined up, and with them in irregular ranks stood many of the royal guards. The strength was, so far, hidden, but they could move in on the assembled nobles in moments. What Solon couldn’t see was how Kaede was taking this prologue to treason.
He didn’t have to wait long.
Kaede strode up onto the platform directly to Oshobi and slapped his face. “If you speak treason, Oshobi Takeda, I will have your head,” Kaede said in a clear, fearless voice.
An older noble Solon recognized as Nori Oshibatu, long a friend of the Wariyamos, shot a look at Oshobi and stepped forward. “My dear, Kaede, our beloved empress, you sound hysterical. This is not befitting. Please, he only speaks.” Nori pulled Kaede back into the crowd, where several other family “friends” closed around her.
Oshobi smiled like the big cat he was. “I came here to serve Seth, but this very morning, I discovered something my honor could not countenance. Daune Wariyamo had on her person letters from the late emperor’s brother Solon to Kaede. In these letters, he spoke of his trysts with her in the castle and of a secret marriage.”
“You lie!” Kaede shrieked.
Solon’s heart sank. The trysts in the castle had only been attempted trysts, culminating in the disaster of her mother coming in on them naked and beating Solon with a shoe. It would have been worth it if she’d come in ten minutes later or—well, he’d been a young man—maybe two minutes later. The marriage, of course, was a total fiction.
But Oshobi was quick. “I have the letters here!” he said, brandishing a sheaf. “And this woman was with Lady Wariyamo when she came upon you fornicating in the castle.” A slave woman was thrust forward. “I do so swear,” she said in a tiny voice.
“Louder,” Oshobi demanded.
“I swear it’s true!”
The nobles were in the predictable uproar, but Oshobi was wise enough that he didn’t call his men forward. Kaede was screaming, but someone put a hand over her mouth, and numerous men were restraining her.
“So you see, even if we believe that Kaede wasn’t incestuous in her sluttish trysts in our nation’s very heart, we know that she married Sijuron Tofusin. A marriage null and void because she was already married—to the emperor’s brother!”
Oshobi painted a sad look on his face. “I woke this morning, willing to dishonor my family because I wanted to do what was right for our country—”
Behind Solon, the door creaked open. He turned away from the courtyard to see his two guards enter. “All right,” the paunchy one said, “we already let you see more of the show than we was supposed to. You can figure how it turns out from here. You ready?”
“Yes,” Solon said. He drew in his Talent. “Which of you would like to die first?”
“Huh?” they asked in unison.
“Together then,” he said, and stilled their hearts with his Talent.
The guards collapsed, one crumpling, the other falling full on his face. Solon took a sword and faced the barred window.
With a concussion that rocked the castle, Solon blew out the entire wall. Stones rained on the crowd fifty paces away. Everyone ducked and turned to see what had happened. And Dorian always said I wasn’t subtle.
Solon jumped down lightly and strode toward the crowd. A guard stepped in his path, wide-eyed and gulping. Solon gestured as if shooing a fly and a wall of air flipped the guard aside.
“I am Solonariwan Tofusin, son of Emperor Cresus Tofusin, Light of the West, Protector of the Isles, and High Admiral of the Royal Fleets of Seth.” It was a deliberately ambiguous construction, whether he was listing his father’s titles, or claiming them for himself. “I have come home, and I call you a traitor and a liar, Oshibi. And even if your despicable lies were true, you have no claim to this throne while I live.”
“We can remedy that,” Oshobi snarled.
Solon advanced quickly onto the platform, not giving Oshobi time to think. “You would duel me?” Solon asked. He laughed scornfully. “A Tofusin does not dirty his hands with the blood of a dog.”
Oshobi roared, drew his sword and hacked at Solon with all his considerable strength. Solon deflected it. His counterstroke cut halfway into Oshobi’s neck. Oshobi’s eyes went big, but he tried to complete one more slash while Solon’s sword was stuck. A sliver of magic enervated Oshobi’s fingers. The sword dropped.
“However,” Solon said, “I’ll make an exception for a Little Cat.” He ripped the sword out of Oshobi’s neck and blood sprayed over the platform as the big man dropped onto his face. Solon put his foot on the neck of his dying foe and pointed the sword at the nobles holding Kaede. “That’s your empress,” Solon said. “I’d advise you to take your hands off her.”
60
After riding most of the night, Kylar camped a short distance off the road, merely unsaddling Tribe and throwing a blanket on the ground. A few hours later, Tribe’s snort woke him. Kylar blinked and rolled to his feet.
“So you haven’t forgotten everything I taught you,” a brown-clad figure said, leading his horse to tie it next to Tribe.
“Master?” Kylar asked.
Dehvirahaman ko Bruhmaeziwakazari snorted. It was odd to hear the sound, so characteristically Durzo, coming out of the Ymmuri’s mouth. He glanced at Retribution in Kylar’s hand. “Good, I see you haven’t managed to lose it again, yet. See that you don’t, would you? You ready to ride?”
Kylar felt an odd excitement. He did feel ready to ride. The overflow of energy from his invocation of immortality hadn’t worn off yet. “I’m not dreaming this, am I?” he asked.
Dehvi lifted an eyebrow. “There’s one way to find out for sure,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“Go piss in the woods. If you feel wet and warm afterward, wake up.”
Laughing, Kylar went and relieved himself. When he came back, Dehvi was seated cross-legged and had laid out a huge, albeit cold, breakfast.
Kylar tore into the food with gusto that surprised himself, though apparently not Dehvi. The scene still had an air of unreality, though, and Kylar kept glancing at him. Finally, the Ymmuri said, “If you’re looking for Durzo’s mannerisms, you’re going to see fewer and fewer of them. I don’t chew garlic anymore, for one. And I’m getting rid of the rest as fast as I can. A new face isn’t much good if you still do everything else the same. I have done this a few times. So if you need me to prove who I am, let’s get it over with.”
“There is one thing Durzo told me that he never told anyone else. You’ve had all these names, and you always picked something with meaning: Ferric Fireheart, Gaelan Starfire, Hrothan Steelbender. Even the other wetboys had names that meant something: Hu Gibbet, Scarred Wrable. Why Durzo Blint? Is that another Old Jaeran pun?”
Dehvi laughed. “Trick question. I never told you why I chose it. But to answer, it was supposed to be Durzo Flint. I was drunk. Someone repeated it Blint, and I didn’t care enough to correct them. Next?”
“Flint makes a lot more sense, you old bastard.”
“Only by nature, not by birth. Anything else?”
Kylar got grim. “What does immortality cost?”
“Right to the gut, huh?” Durzo said. He cleared his throat and looked away. “Every new life costs the life of someone you love.”
There it was, as simple as anything. If Durzo had told him that before the coup, everything would be different. Of course, Durzo had tried to tell him, in the letter.
“Is there any way to stop it?” Kylar asked.
“You mean stop your immortality or stop it from killing someone else?”
“Either. Both.”
“The Wolf never told me the limits—maybe he didn’t know himself. I avoided anything that would fully destroy my body like burning or being drawn and quartered.”
“And Curoch?”
Durzo shot Kylar a sharp look. “A fatal blow from Curoch would blow apart the immortality magic. Jorsin f
eared the Devourer. He made sure there was at least one way to kill an immortal.”
Kylar had a sudden feeling of dislocation. He was talking with someone who had known Jorsin Alkestes. Jorsin Alkestes! And Jorsin had feared the magic Kylar possessed. “What about stopping it from costing someone else’s life?” Kylar asked.
Durzo sighed. “You think in seven centuries I didn’t try? It’s deep magic, kid. A life for a life. The Wolf can delay it, but not stop it, and it’s not easy even for him.”
Kylar cleared his throat. “What if, um, what if I were killed by Curoch during the time between me dying and the person who is going to die for me dying?”
The look on Durzo’s face made it clear that Kylar’s question was far too specific for him to dismiss as theoretical. “Boy, you have no idea what Curoch is like—”
“Yes I do, I threw it into Ezra’s Wood.”
“You what?!”
“I made a deal with the Wolf. I didn’t get your note until afterward.”
Durzo rubbed his temples. “And what did he give you in return for the most powerful artifact in the world?”
“He brought me back to life faster—and gave me my arm back, which I kind of cut off.”
Durzo’s flat stare was all too familiar, despite that it was coming through almond-shaped eyes. It suggested he was seeing previously undredged depths of stupidity. “And between assassinating a Godking and a Cenarian queen and rescuing a man from the Hole and making a king of him, when did you squeeze in the time to find and lose the world’s most coveted magical sword?” Durzo asked.
“It only took me a week. Lantano Garuwashi had it. I dueled him for it.”
“Is he as good as they say?”
“Better. And he’s not even Talented.”
“Then how’d you win?” Durzo asked.
“Hey!” Kylar protested.
“Kylar, I trained you. You’re not the best. Someday, maybe. So either he’s not as good as they say, or you got lucky, or you cheated.”
“I got lucky,” Kylar admitted. “Is it so bad though? I mean throwing Curoch in the Wood?”
“Do you know who the Wolf is?” Durzo asked.
“That was the next question.”
“The better question is who the Wolf was. No one knows what he is now.”
“I’ll bite. Who was the Wolf?” Kylar asked.
“In Jorsin Alkestes’ court, there was a mage with golden eyes. He was slightly less Talented than Jorsin himself in terms of raw power, but whereas Jorsin had to learn the arts of war and leadership and diplomacy in addition to magecraft, the golden-eyed mage had only magecraft to study, and he was the kind of genius of magic born once in a thousand years. He had few graces and fewer friends, but Jorsin meant the world to him. In the war, he lost everything: Jorsin, all his tomes of magic, his only other friend, Oren Razin, and his fiancée. He lost his sanity, too, and no one knows if he ever really regained it. He hid in a forest where he could work out his hatred. The forest, of course, took his name.”
“Ezra’s Wood,” Kylar whispered. “The Wolf is Ezra?”
“Jorsin had a close friend who betrayed him, a man named Roygaris Ursuul.”
“Oh God.”
“During the war, Roygaris Made something—out of himself. We called it the Reaver. It was impervious to magic, faster than thought. It killed thousands of us.” Durzo touched his cheek. “I was the first person to even wound it. My pockmarks are from where its blood sprayed me. Magic couldn’t heal me. After the last battle, the Reaver was badly wounded. Instead of killing it, Ezra took it to the Wood. Fifty years later, there was a power struggle of some sort, and every living thing in that wood died—and dies to this day, whether animal, krul, mage, or the purest virgin. Armies from both north and south have perished there. Whatever it is, the Wolf has been collecting artifacts for seven centuries, and he gets the best of every deal.”
Kylar felt suddenly cold. “What did you give him?”
“A couple of the ka’kari. He wants them all—and Curoch and Iures.”
“Iures?”
“The companion to Curoch. The Sword of Power and the Staff of Law. Jorsin died the day Iures was finished, before he could use it. No one knows what happened to it.”
“But what’s the Wolf trying to accomplish?”
“I don’t know. Kylar, we’ve held one ka’kari, and its power is awesome. Imagine what an archmagus could do with seven ka’kari and Curoch and Iures. Even if the Wolf is Ezra, would you trust a madman with that much power? Would you even trust yourself? What if the Wolf isn’t Ezra, what if it’s Roygaris?”
“So you’ve opposed him,” Kylar said.
“After I gave him the brown ka’kari, I thought better of it. Since then, I’ve scattered ka’kari to the ends of the earth. This is no short-term ambition. It has taken the Wolf seven hundred years to get a few ka’kari and now Curoch, and perhaps Iures. He doesn’t care if it takes another hundred years to get the rest. This is part of your burden. Make sure he doesn’t get them all.”
“But he might be on our side,” Kylar said.
“You tell that to all the innocents he’s murdered.”
“What do I tell all the innocents you’ve murdered?”
Durzo blinked. He chewed on his lip. “The problem with the black ka’kari is that it doesn’t work in a mirror. I could never see the state of my own soul, and you can’t see yours either. But if you wish, bring it to your eyes now. Judge me.”
Kylar didn’t dare. Durzo had poisoned dozens during the coup alone. There were surely hundreds—thousands—more deaths on his soul. If Kylar saw profound guilt, he might not be able to stop himself from killing Durzo. Or at least trying. It wasn’t a fight he wanted to win, and now that he knew the cost of losing, that was even worse. “What should I do about the Wolf?” Kylar asked.
“Nothing now. But if you hear that Mount Tenji isn’t spitting fire for the first time in two centuries, or you hear that the Tlaxini Maelstrom has stilled, you need to move fast. Like I said, this is not a short-term threat.”
“When does it end?”
Durzo snorted. His hand moved to his belt where he used to carry a small pouch of garlic cloves. He noticed and gritted his teeth. “It could be hundreds of years. It could be twenty. Giving him Curoch was a big mistake.”
Thanks. “Can we win?”
“We? I’m mortal now, kid. At best I have thirty, forty years left? I’m not terribly interested in tangling with the Wolf. Can you win? It’s possible. He can’t live forever. His magic’s only an imitation of ours. Yours.”
“He made one black ka’kari, why not make another one for himself?” Kylar asked.
“Made it? No. Ezra found it. He studied it to make the others, but they were all inferior copies.”
“It told me—”
“Let me guess, something about being crafted with ‘limited intelligence’? The black ka’kari was ancient when I was born, Kylar. It told you that so it wouldn’t scare the shit out of you. You’re sharing your head with a being whose power dwarfs yours.”
~I wouldn’t say my power exactly dwarfs yours.~
“Give the fucker my regards,” Durzo said.
~I loved you better than you loved yourself, Acaelus.~
“I have to say, though, if he tells you to move, do it,” Durzo said.
Right. Thanks. The first time the ka’kari had spoken to Kylar, it told him to duck. He hadn’t—and had taken an arrow through the chest moments later. “Wait,” Kylar said. “You never answered my question about dying by Curoch before the ka’kari kills someone in my place.”
“Don’t,” Durzo said. “It’s not the ka’kari that kills anyone. It’s us. You’re twenty years old and you’ve died five, six times? That’s not the ka’kari’s fault.”
“Fine, it’s my fault. Curoch?”
Irritation passed over Durzo’s face, but he let it go. “Dying by Curoch might leave the person you love alive. Equally possible is that it will kill everyone yo
u love. It’s a feral magic. Curoch means the Sunderer. It was not intended for gentle things. It’s a bad gamble, kid.”
Kylar exhaled heavily. “This is all kind of a lot to absorb at once.”
“Then absorb while we ride. We’re burning daylight.”
They rode until dark, and ate together, speaking only of inconsequential things. Kylar told Durzo everything that had happened in his absence. Durzo laughed, sometimes in the wrong places, as if laughing at similarities to his own memories, but more frequently than Kylar remembered him ever laughing before.
Then Durzo began telling stories. Kylar was surprised to find him an excellent raconteur. “I was a bard one life,” Durzo said. “I took it up to train my memory. I wasn’t very good.”
Some of the stories he told were familiar from bards’ tales Kylar had heard, though the details were very different. He told of a young Alexan the Blessed caught with dysentery in the mountains during his first campaign taking off his plate cuisses and dropping his mail trousers to squat in the bushes and then getting ambushed. His descriptions of Alexan fighting with a sword in one hand and trying to hike up his armor with the other had Kylar howling. Then Alexan tumbled down the mountain and fell a hundred feet. They found him at the bottom without a scratch—or his trousers, which had caught in a tree ten feet from the bottom of the ravine, slowing his fall and saving his life. “The Tomii used shitting as an intensifier, like we might say someone was damn lucky, they said he was shitting lucky. That’s why they called him Alexan the Shitting Lucky. Later some prude translated it Alexan the Blessed. He was a good kid.” Durzo laughed. Then his smile faded. “Broke my heart to kill him. But he needed killing by the end.”
Kylar looked at his master intently. He said, “You’re different now.”